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Saint Paul Public Schools, St. Paul, Minnesota
Our Mission
The Lab is a small group experience where youth are inspired, encouraged and empowered to discover, understand and share their voices and the truth of their lives.
Through four modalities, the Lab encourages the use of creativity in community as a healthy coping strategy. The small group experience offers a forum in which youth can practice social skills, creative self-expression and self-care, as well as improve skills in reading, writing, technology and performance.
Our Guiding Principles
The LAB empowers youth to share the stories of their lives, their opinions and their emotions. We offer small group experiences where youth can express themselves in constructive and creative ways, through four modalities, including: poetry, visual art, technology and experiential wellness.
The LAB fosters a strong sense of community among the students, staff and parents of each program site by utilizing a facilitated conversation circle approach to community building, encouraging all voices to contribute and be heard. The circle operates with the following philosophy (a suggestion for teen writing circles written in a book called Paint Me Like I Am: Teen Poems from WritersCorps):
Everyone in the circle is equal
No one’s voice is more important than anyone else’s
Everyone in the circle is a teacher
Everyone in the circle is a student
Everyone has his or her turn to speak within the circle
When one is speaking, all others listen
The circle is sacred and special
